Community

The ToDo group has published a document that covers the tools for managing open source programs on GitHub. From the Readme: This guide provides details and scenarios for how to get your open source tool collection started, including information about the most important tools to use to track and manage your open source projects. Many […]

Mozilla has announced new funding via their Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) program to support important open source projects. Ushahidi was the biggest benefactor of this program, receiving $194,000. Ushahidi is a platform for “crowdsourcing, monitoring, visualizing, and responding to reports from people caught up in political turmoil or subject to governmental or vigilante abuse.” […]

GitHub has published the results of their 2017 open source survey that highlights many of the challenges the open source industry is currently facing. They “collected responses from 5,500 randomly sampled respondents sourced from over 3,800 open source repositories on GitHub.com, and over 500 responses from a non-random sample of communities that work on other […]

SXSW is a giant event in Austin, TX that attracts hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to see the latest in music, movies, technology, and art. Most people are aware of the bigger events that require badges to get in, but there are also a ton of smaller events that are free […]

These 5 FOSS projects focus on helping people in need. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap – After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the OpenStreetMap community joined together to build maps of Haiti from any pre-earthquake data they could find. After the crisis, the community stayed involved in the recovery process to help continually improve the map information. Literacy Bridge […]

Modern agriculture equipment is highly complex and often requires farmers to hire certified technicians whenever there are problems. Many companies have locked down the computers that run their equipment with proprietary software and hardware, and due to the DMCA anyone who modifies the proprietary DRM risks being targeted for copyright infringement. This has led to […]

The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) has had a number of controversies during heated debates over the development of the Kernel. Most recently, Lennart Poettering, the creator of systemd, wrote an article where he accused Linus Torvalds of encouraging personal attacks on him. The resolution code was written by Greg Kroah-Hartman and was signed off […]

The biggest benefit of open source can also be its greatest challenge. While the ability to modify, reuse, and redistribute software freely helps open source innovate at an extreme pace, it also puts the responsibility of it’s improvement in the hands of the users. This means that users of open source have a responsibility to […]

Cassidy James, the founder of Elementary OS, a popular Linux distribution, recently came under fire after suggesting that users who downloaded their software without paying were “cheating” the system. He has since retracted those words, but the implications of this statement are still being discussed. Open source is built on the concept that anyone can […]

In this interview, Kara Sowles, a Community Manager at Puppet Labs shares some of the challenges of managing user groups and offers tips for representing your own open source project in a user group. More from OpenSource.com

This short talk from Raghavendra Prabhu gives some pointers on how to successfully leverage documentation in an open source community. [00:30] – Good documentation helps communities grow, attracts contributors, enhances the quality of code, and helps make bug fixes. Redis, Docker, the Linux Kernel, Python and Go are just a few examples of projects with […]

There is no time better than the present to get involved with an open source project. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for a while, or maybe you made a resolution for 2015. Either way, these five projects are great opportunities to get you feet wet in open source software. BRL-CAD – 3D modeling program […]

Community management is a job that is dynamic and requires a broad skillset. These tips from established community managers in the open source industry can be beneficial to anyone looking to get better at this role. The tips include providing contributors with appreciation and gratitude, celebrating work and making heroes, listening to the major complaints […]

Starting a Co-op can be a very similar experience to starting an open source project because they are centered around the concept of people taking action and solving their own problems. Projects like these live or die by the people that volunteer their time, so it is vital to foster a strong community. This can […]

Growstuff is an open source project focused on building a crop database from crowdsourced, grower knowledge that helps others learn how to grow food in their area. The open food movement has been around for quite a long time and focuses on making the farm to table process for food more transparent so consumers can […]

In this video [6:15] , Jen Wike discusses the efforts the team at opensource.com in building a platform for people to tell stories about open source. Opensource.com has been a platform for users to explain how they use open source in their own work, and the site has had immense success in growing their contributor […]

At first glance, systemd might appear to be yet another “holy war” in the long list of debates that have raged within the Linux community. However, unlike the debates over emacs v. vi, GNOME v. KDE, and BSD v. GPL, it seems most users and developers aren’t being given a choice over the use of […]

A lot of attention has been brought to the exclusivity of some open source communities like Linux. Lennart Poettering recently described the problems he has had with the Linux community in a recent blog post which discussed the harsh reaction to Systemd which went as far as including death threats. Linus suggests that harsh language […]

Florian Effenberger is the Executive Director of the Document Foundation, the organization behind LibreOffice: a popular open source productivity suite. In this interview he discusses how LibreOffice separated itself from the OpenOffice community 10 years ago, and the importance branding played in achieving early success. More from Linux Voice

The community forms the backbone of any open source project and it is vital to the success of any businesses that are involved. Often, disagreements over code can lead to personal attacks that shun people away from the community; this can cause major problems with the long term sustainability of the open source community. By […]

OST Original

This article is part of The Comprehensive Guide to Open Source for Business., and was originally posted on the Samsung Open Source Group blog. Open source communities are as complex as the diverse individuals that contribute to them, and there is no one-size-fits-all definition of how they operate. With that said, there are a lot […]

Random Articles from the OST Archives

There are many ways for non-coders to get involved with open source projects. Most projects need things like bug reports, feature requests, testing, documentation, language translation, and promotion. Just about anyone can find a way to use their skills to the benefit of open source. More from OpenSource.com

Florian Effenberger is the Executive Director of the Document Foundation, the organization behind LibreOffice: a popular open source productivity suite. In this interview he discusses how LibreOffice separated itself from the OpenOffice community 10 years ago, and the importance branding played in achieving early success. More from Linux Voice

In this interview, Kara Sowles, a Community Manager at Puppet Labs shares some of the challenges of managing user groups and offers tips for representing your own open source project in a user group. More from OpenSource.com

Modern agriculture equipment is highly complex and often requires farmers to hire certified technicians whenever there are problems. Many companies have locked down the computers that run their equipment with proprietary software and hardware, and due to the DMCA anyone who modifies the proprietary DRM risks being targeted for copyright infringement. This has led to […]